Many eastern Nigerians still wonder and ask what would have happened had Biafra succeeded. What if the federal government had agreed to “let Biafra go?” Or if Biafra had hung on long enough for a United Nations resolution calling for the establishment of a new independent state in eastern Nigeria?

Ostensibly, Biafra had the ingredients to succeed and become a successful nation. It had an educated and skilled workforce, a charismatic head of state, a citizenry with a messianic zeal for their country to succeed, natural resources, a coastline, and perhaps most crucially of all –
billions of dollars worth of crude oil flowing underneath its soil.

BIAFRA – A WORLD SUPERPOWER?

With oil wealth and a vibrant citizenry, Biafra could have become Africa’s first world superpower. With citizens of the caliber of Nnamdi Azikiwe,
Sir Louis Mbafeno, Matthew Mbu, Chike Obi, Chukwuemeka Ojukwu, Christopher Okigbo, and Michael Okpara, it had men of foresight, intellect, and vision to rival any nation in Africa. Academics, civil servants, diplomats, doctors, judges, mathematicians, professors, scientists, soldiers…Biafra had them all. When Biafra seceded, it took not only a portion of Nigerian territory with it, but also a massive part of Nigeria’s brainpower, army officers corps, and wealth.

The remarkable ingenuity of Biafra’s engineers during the war proved the old adage that “necessity is the mother of all invention”. Had the
short-term technical ingenuity which led Biafra to refine fuel, manufacture everything from armoured vehicles to soap, and land mines encased in milk churns, been allowed to continue long term; it may have led to an industrial and technological revolution in west Africa. A country full of people that could create, invent, lead, teach, think, and fight. Surely nothing could stop such a country. The sky was the limit for
a country blessed with so much talent, motivation, and patriotic intensity to succeed. Biafra could have been Africa’s answer to Israel; the little
country that punches above its weight and refuses to give in.

THE “JEWS OF AFRICA”

However as well as emulating Israel’s benefits, Biafra may also have mimicked Israel’s problems. Igbos are often called “The Jews of Africa”.
The title is not fanciful. Had Biafra succeeded, it would have had similar demographic and geographic challenges to the world’s only Jewish state. It would have been surrounded by hostile nations, while simultaneously facing an armed insurrection within its borders by its own citizens.

Biafra faced many challenges within; including a Game of Thrones style cocktail of conspiracies, internal rivalries, politics, and in-fighting.
Not all eastern Nigerians approved of secession. The Efiks, Annangs, Ibibios, and Ijaws within Biafra were not enthusiastic about swapping a
Nigerian passport under a Hausa-Fulani led government, with a Biafran passport where they would be led by an Igbo government. How would the ethnic groups on Biafra’s southern coast react to being minority citizens of a country where most of the wealth is obtained from their land, but
where they did not have economic and political leadership? Probably in the way they reacted when the same circumstances arose in Nigeria; MEND,Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force et al. The armed campaign of kidnapping and violence which Niger Delta militants waged against the
Nigerian federal government would instead have been waged within Biafra’s borders – against the Biafran government. Isaac Idaka Boro’s short-lived Niger Delta Peoples Republic (and the fact that Boro fought for the Nigerian federal army against Biafra) was a demonstration that Niger Delta militants would have turned their guns on Biafra before long.

NOISY NEIGHBOURS

How would Biafra have related to its neighbours? To its northern border would have been one or two landlocked northern republics awash with
trained combatant soldiers and guns. These landlocked countries would need would need deals with Biafra to gain access to the sea. If Biafra refused or negotiations got difficult, their demands for access to the sea may have turned violent. Would these northern republics quietly tolerate the noisy, rich, and successful little nation to their south without envy or
rivalry? Unlikely.

THE MID-WEST

To Biafra’s western border would have been a diverse country of Edos, Esans, Isokos, Itsekiris, Urhobos, Ika-Igbos and others (modern day Delta
and Edo States). Would Biafra have closed its borders to its Igbo brothers living in the state next door? Two options were open to Biafra. It could have encouraged the Igbos living to its west to migrate to Biafra by granting them automatic Biafran citizenship under an Israel style “law of return”. That of course would have presented its own problems by inferring
that Biafra was an Igbo ethnic theocracy. It would also have fuelled fears among non-Igbo Biafrans that Biafra was an Igbo project.

The other option would have been to enlarge Biafra’s territory by extending its borders westward into Igbo speaking areas west of the River
Niger such as Asaba. Non-Igbos living in such areas were unlikely to
accept such territorial encroachment peacefully. Any Biafran attempt to annex territory west of the Niger would have been violently resisted. Even if successful, Biafran soldiers would have been viewed as an army of occupation in the manner of British soldiers in Northern Ireland and
Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

SurefireAsoOke:
If Biafra Go, Nigeria will still remain.






For Aso-Oke, Check my Signature